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News Roundup January 23-28 2012

Figured I should start doing these again. If you want some of my past news reports since after my last News Roundup you might want to check out the One Piece Podcast.

- Kotobukiya is coming out with "One Piece" ice cube trays in April. It looks like you'll be able to make ice cubes in the shapes of Luffy, Devil Fruits, Chopper, the Straw Hat skull, and the mast heads of the Straw Hat ships. The trays will sell at ¥1,050 (about US$13):

- Usually when we hear about "One Piece" related crimes it's about online piracy, but this one seems more interesting. Apparently some guy stole all 64 volumes of the manga from a bookstore. When employees checked the security cams they saw him shove the books into a Boston Bag by ten volume handfuls. The suspect then sold the books to a secondhand shop. Thankfully the crook was arrested by Shizuoka police:

- MarcelloF was nice enough to post some cool new info about how the anime's doing in Germany. Viva has purchased all the episodes that have been dubbed, up to episode 400. "New" episodes will also start showing on Fridays.

But even bigger news, the show is coming out on DVD thanks to Kaze! Well, at least episodes 1-195, hopefully there'll be more afterwards. The DVDs start coming out in May, and there will be a press release coming out on February 17th with more info. For more details and links, check out post #751 in the German-Dubbed One Piece (VIVA) thread:

- luffink posted an "official" reply from the UK Namco Bandai community with more info about the situation concerning the "Unlimited Cruise SP" European release, and how it won't contain part 2 of "Unlimited Cruise". Check post #894 on the One Piece: Unlimited Cruise SP - 3DS thread:

Finally, I'd just like to give an honorable shoutout to North American fans. If you're interested, it's not too late to preorder Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha; it comes January 30th. Along with the change in the magazine the website will be changed to SJalpha.com that same day, in what I assume will come with a big layout change. You can also go to the website now to participate in a survey where you could win "One Piece" prizes, including DVD sets and and various merch. The survey is mainly based around the recent special "One Piece" issue: